“There are 88 keys on a standard piano, 52 white keys and 36 black keys”, begins Anoushka Lucas, writer, composer and sole performer of the semi-autobiographical tale of Lylah, a mixed-race child of an Anglo-Indian father and an ambitious, French-Cameroonian mother, who attends the prestigious Lycee School on a scholarship, while sharing the living room (come bedroom) with her sister in a cramped West London council flat. “A council flat,” she retorts, “not a council estate, there is a clear distinction”.
When Lylah’s parents have an upright piano swung in through the upstairs window of their Hammersmith flat, her love affair with the piano is confirmed. 7-year-old Lylah finds solace from her chaotic family life in her new best friend. “As soon as I started playing the piano, I realised I had the whole room to myself,” she explained.
At school, Lylah’s musical talents excel, but while she yearned to be accepted, her complicated heritage only forces her to stand out – her skin tone, her crazy hair, her freckles are a reminder that she is different and constantly commented on by her wealthier, white classmates.
As Lylah reaches adulthood, she joins a band and regularly auditions for music moguls and industry professionals alike. This is where Lucas’s writing shines while making you feel as uncomfortable as Lylah, squirming across and hiding underneath her beloved piano, as executive after executive question her look and her sound; striving to define her or label her as possibly the UK’s answer to Alicia Keys, when all Lylah wants as an artist is to just be herself.
When her drummer doesn’t turn up at an important gig, she meets the privileged but talented musician Leo, who quickly replaces the original bandmate as well as finds his way into Lylah’s heart. Leo encourages Lylah’s differences in her beauty and her music, wanting to collaboratively write songs with Lylah and encouraging her to write and perform her songs with others, too. “But if I write with others,” she explains to a confused Leo, “then I might lose what it is I am trying to say”.
As their relationship develops, Leo suggests that Lylah meet his parents for dinner and upon arrival at his wealthy home, she spies a baby grand piano. Under the intense pressure of her surroundings, and with the questioning of her background fired at her from Leo’s parents, the years of frustration with not being seen for who she is sees Lylah exploding into an exasperated rant at Leo’s surprised parents about the origins of the much-lauded baby grand piano in their ‘drawing room’.
“Did you know,” launched a furious Lylah, “that less than a hundred years ago, there were five million wild elephants in Africa, and today there are barely 416,000 in the wild? The keys of this piano would have been made from an elephant’s tusk – a horrifically cruel procedure where the tusk is ripped from the soft part of an elephant’s mouth, causing excruciating pain. It would have been better to have just killed the elephant,” Lylah states sarcastically. “One tusk can make up to twenty-five pianos, you know,” Lucas’s angry explanation of colonialism whereby the enslaved were forced to carry these brutally acquired tusks on their backs to eventually produce the ivory keys of a piano made you want to cheer in solidarity with her every word. Her delivery was sublime. Her fury, felt.
Directed by Jess Edwards and designed by Georgia Elliott, Elephant is performed in the round, the piano itself taking centre-stage in this intimate setting at the Menier, an ideal home for this 85-minute monologue. Anoushka Lucas is an unrelenting and captivating storyteller, from wide-eyed schoolgirl Lylah (“I am the only mixed-race girl in my year at school. In my whole school in fact” she protests) to adult Lylah, repeatedly crushed by music executives, advising her to be more urban as an artist and to utilise her black roots. Throughout, Lucas sings the soundtrack to Lylah’s life beautifully, soulfully and where words are not enough. This is a story of identity, how to fit in, while trying to stand out. Lylah may not have fully achieved it, but Anoushka Lucas, with this powerhouse of a performance, certainly did. Superb.
Reviewed by Miss Woo
At school, Lylah couldn’t ask questions – she had to be good, good, good or else she’d lose her scholarship. At home she couldn’t ask questions; her cousins said she talked weird, and her parents were distracted. Then, a piano came through the sky and landed in Lylah’s council flat, just for her. As she poured over the keys and sound flooded into all the rooms, Lylah fell in love.
Now an adult, Lylah is swept up in the excitement of a new romance and a budding music career. But something still doesn’t feel right. In a search for answers, she turns to her piano. Where did you come from? Why are you here? The unspoken truth of their shared history spills into the light.
Written, composed and performed by: Anoushka Lucas
Director: Jess Edwards
Designer: Georgia Wilmot
Lighting: Laura Howard
Sound: Xana
Video Design: Gillian Tan
ELEPHANT
Menier Chocolate Factory, O’Meara Street
22 May to 28 June 2025
